Coast-to-coast Big Ten: How far teams will travel during college football season

The Big Ten is expanding in a big way in 2024.

The conference formally added four west coast schools, UCLA, USC, Washington and Oregon, on Aug. 2, and with it comes the expectation of added travel.

The 14 Big Ten schools will have to travel to the pacific time zone for conference games for the first time, and more significantly, the four former Pac-12 schools will be making frequent trips to the Midwest.

Of course, with 18 teams, not every team will play the same schedule every year. Which means there will be some major inequities in travel each season.

Here is a closer look at which teams will travel the most, and which will travel the fewest. You can see a complete breakdown courtesy of Bookies.com, here.

UCLA will easily travel the most among Big Ten teams in 2024, The Bruins will cover roughly 90% of the distance around the world, traveling 22,048.04 miles over six road trips while crossing 26 time zones.

A more than 5,000-mile trip to Hawaii is certainly help to up the total, but so will trips to the eastern time zone to face Penn State and Rutgers.

Washington, USC and Oregon are the next three highest, while Rutgers, with 9,278 miles and trip from New Jersey to USC on the docket, has the most travel to do among the non-expansion Big Ten teams.

Michigan State has the 10th most traveling to do at 6,770 miles, including a trip to Oregon.

Three-time defending champion Michigan received a nice draw when it comes to travel, coming in at 16th with 5,193 miles. A trip to Washington’s Husky Stadium makes up the bulk of the travel.

Ohio State, the betting favorite to win the Big Ten, comes in at No. 15. OSU and Michigan are two of five Big Ten schools that make just four road trips. Both teams have just two road games before Nov. 1.

OSU’s round-trip to Oregon for its Oct. 12 game covers 4107 miles, or 72.9% of the total 5,633 miles it will travel the entire regular season.

Indiana travels the fewest miles this season at 4894.88 miles. The Hoosiers make 4 trips and visit UCLA on Sept. 14.

The longest scheduled road trip in the Big Ten this year features USC visiting Maryland on Oct. 19. The Trojans face a round trip of 5844.98 miles.

The shortest scheduled Big Ten road trip is the annual USC-UCLA game. The Rose Bowl and LA Memorial Coliseum are just 12.29 miles apart.